Frank
Hsia-San Shu
President,
National Tsing Hua University
The 2005 Meichu Games
between Tsing Hua and Chiaoda have been completed.
We congratulate Chiaoda on winning the overall
competition,
6-5. Tsing Hua won in Table Tennis, Tennis, Soccer, Men’s
Basketball, and Women’s Basketball, but Chiaoda won in
Badminton, Chess/Go, Bridge,
Baseball, Men’s Volleyball, and Women’s Volleyball.
The overall championship was not decided until the last event on the
last day of competition. We salute
the coaches and players on both teams for hard-fought contests,
thrilling to watch, stirring in the intensity of effort, and satisfying
in the degree of sportsmanship-like
conduct. All the contests were truly studies of magnanimity in victory,
and grace in defeat. It was an auspicious start of a new era in the always
friendly, but fiercely competitive, relationships between our two great
universities.
I wish to
report to those who were not fortunate enough to have been at the games
of one especially heart-warming match-up that exemplifies, I think,
what the Meichu
Games are all about. The match-up occurred in the game between the two
Women’s Basketball teams. On Chiaoda’s team was a
number 5, Ms. Liu Tse
Yi, a junior in the Department of Industrial Engineering. I think all
of us who watched that game, no matter whether we were rooting for
Tsing Hua or
Chiaoda, were truly awed by the range of skills displayed by Ms. Liu. A
playmaking guard, she was the assists and steals leader for the Chiaoda
team, and she
rebounded well and also played superb defense.
But it was
her scoring ability, whether shooting jump shots from the perimeter,
driving through a crowd of Tsing Hua defenders for spectacular lay-ups,
or charging
downcourt on fast breaks that was truly exceptional (and heart-breaking
for those of us on Tsing Hua’s side to watch). It seemed that
there was no way that
Tsing Hua could stop this superstar.
For the
night, Ms. Liu scored 28 points, a total that would be the envy of many
in the NBA. She
would have scored even more, except that during the third quarter,
when Ms. Liu had urged her team to a seemingly insurmountable lead of
11 points, Tsing Hua Coach Chi Lin put in number 15, Ms. Li Zhi-An, to guard Ms.
Liu. Ms. Li is a junior in the Department of Chemistry at Tsing Hua,
and until that substitution, she had not played very many minutes for
her team this
season.
Ms. Li had
a single assignment, to guard Ms. Liu, no matter where she went and
deny her the ball. Chiaoda
set fearsome picks to free Ms. Liu, and it was frightening
to see Ms. Li run into one player after another, taller and stronger
than she, somehow shake off the collision, and continue her chase of
Ms. Liu. Chiaoda’s
counter-strategy did not work; Ms. Li was simply too tenacious. To counter Ms.
Li’s defense, Chaioda was committing another player to set
the picks, and
Ms. Liu was visibly getting extremely tired from having to work so hard
on both ends of the court, with and without the ball.
Slowly, the Tsing Hua team
got back into the game, point by difficult point. In the end, the
heart-break was Chiaoda’s. The final score was Tsing Hua 65,
Chiaoda 58.
After the
game, both teams cried, as much, I suspect, from exhaustion as from joy
or pain. It was a game that brought honor and pride to both schools.
Ms. Liu can be
proud of a performance of skill, determination, and bravery that none
of us who saw the game will ever forget. Ms. Li also played the game of
her life,
made even more meaningful, not because it resulted in victory, but
because she brought forth reserves of excellence and fortitude in a
pressure-packed
situation that perhaps she did not realize she had in herself. In the
aftermath, the students of Tsing Hua using the internet voted Ms. Li
the most valuable
player of the game. She had not scored a single point, but she had
covered herself with glory. It is an experience that I am sure will
live in Ms. Li’s memory
forever, and help to make her a stronger, better person. It is granted only to a
fortunate few to have been issued such a formidable challenge, survived
the test, and be found not wanting.
This
single contest – school against school, team against team,
athlete against athlete – competed in a fair and open, if
raucous, setting, by two sides unwilling
to settle for second best, exemplifies what the Meichu Games are about,
indeed what life in its finest moments is about. The deeper contest is
not between
oneself and one’s opponent, but whether one has personally
made the best effort to excel. Tsing Hua and Chiaoda are now entering a
new relationship
in a united effort to be more competitive in the international arena of
top universities in the world. In the intellectual competition among nations,
our two schools are on the same side. The skill and will displayed by
Ms. Liu and Ms. Li on that memorable evening of the 2005 Meichu
Women’s Basketball game will be
joined in a common cause. It is an unbeatable combination if we have
the courage to excel.
